Ignacy Sachs and Dana Silk
Food-Energy Nexus Programme Area, The United Nations University

At about the same time that urban agriculture was emerging as
a focal topic within the United Nations University's programme
area on the Food-Energy Nexus (FEN), the special issue of the
Food and Nutrition Bulletin on household-level food production
(vol. 7, no. 3, September 1985) appeared. Several months later,
we were pleased to accept an invitation to put together this
follow-up issue on urban agriculture that presents a sampling of
work that FEN has commissioned in this field.

Based on the recognition that food and energy are two major
human needs and that an analysis of their interaction could lead
to a better understanding of how more innovative approaches could
be used to increase both the production of and access to these
resources, FEN research developed in two directions. The first
was the analysis of integrated food-energy systems based on
closed-loop ecological systems adapted to specific environmental
and cultural conditions. The second was the study of how greater
urban self-reliance could lead to more equitable, efficient, and
ecologically sustainable use of such resources.

Both of these approaches were based on the belief that a
dependable supply of cooked food should be regarded as a
fundamental human right. Unfortunately, for millions of persons,
particularly in developing nations, regular access to nutritional
meals is either impossible or requires an exhaustive-and
exhausting -effort. This is no longer simply a rural problem but
one that is becoming increasingly widespread among the urban
poor.

Both the rural and the urban poor are unable to obtain the
food they need (or the fuel to cook it) be cause they lack the
money to buy it or the time and the resources to produce it. They
have no choice but to live from hand to mouth, often resorting to
predatory patterns of resource use that further weaken their
already marginal situation. They are simply hapless participants
in a process that transforms them into both the agents and the
first victims of environmental degradation.

How can this conflict be overcome? How can food and energy
production be made complementary? There is considerable potential
in the use of agricultural residues and other wastes to ensure
the production of an optimal mix of food, fuel, fodder,
industrial feedstock, and fibre. The promotion of integrated
food-energy systems, which are closely related to the ancient
practicality of small farmers, should not be interpreted as a
call to a return to traditional techniques but rather as an
attempt to improve food production and processing practices.
Using ecosystems as a paradigm for man-made systems is perfectly
compatible with modern science and technology. In fact, combining
this approach with the latest advances in biotechnology opens up
enormous possibilities.

Obviously, problems of access to food and energy for the urban
masses cannot be solved in the same way, and it would be
impossible to seek total self-sufficiency in cities that must
continue to depend to a considerable extent on an inflow of
external food and energy. In this context, one has to understand
the potential for increasing the degree of urban self-reliance in
food and energy and to determine what can be done to make such
access more equitable.

The patterns of resource flow between the country side and
cities are quite diverse, and the debate on the extent to which
cities are parasitic or generative relative to the countryside is
far from being closed. Furthermore, a whole range of new
rural/urban configurations, as well as emerging patterns of rural
industrialization and redeployment of secondary and tertiary
activities, are made possible by the latest generation of
technological innovations.

In this context, FEN has concentrated on more immediate issues
by exploring the potential for urban innovations through:

-new forms of organization of economic activity capable of
improving the degree of use of the potential for work available
in the society (going beyond the formal/informal dichotomy);
-ways of tapping the latent, underused, or wasted physical
resources in urban ecosystems;
-the identification of technologies appropriate to given
ecological, cultural, and socio-economic contexts;
-institutional designs leading to a greater community
involvement;
-public policy instruments and policy packages supportive of
social innovations in the urban context.

This approach led to the identification of some key issues
dealing with the production of and access to food and energy by
the urban poor. Urban agriculture emerged as one of these both
because it can have an immediate impact among the urban poor and
because it has been given hardly any attention by government or
research agencies. Relatively little documentation exists on the
actual extent of urban agriculture (due in part to the difficulty
of quantifying its impact), and until recently there has been no
concerted effort to publish research findings in this field.1
Furthermore, its potential as an alternative to increased
commercial production, more food subsidies, and improved
distribution and storage systems is not well understood.

Without resorting to highly artificial and expensive
food-production systems, the absolute output of urban agriculture
is obviously limited. There is great opportunity, however, to use
urban resources to enable some inhabitants to provide themselves
with substantial portions of their recommended daily allowance of
calories and protein, including most of the vitamins and minerals
needed to maintain health. Urban agriculture can thus make a
significant contribution to the poorest of the poor, for whom
small amounts of food, particularly during the "hungry
season" between harvests of staple crops, can make a crucial
difference.

In one of the few major publications in this field, Brownrigg
[1] made the point that home gardens are not just vegetable
gardens: they often contain plants that provide starch, fruits,
herbs, flowers, and medicines as well as fuel wood. In many
cases, small livestock are also raised, with their wastes helping
to fertilize the garden, whose wastes, in turn, help to feed the
livestock.

The production of more food in urban areas also reduces the
need for environmentally and economically expensive
transportation of perishable goods, as well as eliminating most
of the energy-intensive and often wasteful processing, packaging,
and storage requirements of commercial foodstuffs. Urban
agriculture can also provide demonstration projects for new crop
varieties as well as for new cooking tools and techniques, which
are proving to be important in the post-harvest stage of the food
cycle.

The preparation of compost helps to recycle the organic wastes
of many households at both the micro and macro levels. In
Calcutta, for example, "garbage gardens" thrive on that
city's mostly degradable waste, which is painstakingly sorted by
thousands of garbage pickers. Separation of wastes at the
household level facilitates the recycling of other materials,
which not only reduces pollution but generates employment and
conserves energy. Thus, one should not underestimate the role
that urban agriculture can play in community development and
revitalization.

Although many people in Western countries have lost their
links with the land over the last several generations, such is
not the case for most of those who are now migrating into cities
of the developing nations. While some of these migrants may not
like the idea of continuing to work the land, the fact remains
that they do have the survival skills necessary to produce their
own food if they have access to the resources. The attitudinal
barrier is complicated in many African countries by the
traditional role of women in subsistence farming, which
reinforces the reluctance of men to engage in non-commericial
food production.

This issue of the Food and Nutrition Bulletin includes
contributions on urban agriculture by several FEN consultants or
collaborators. Isabel Wade, author of the recent manual
"City Food: Crop Selection in Third World Cities,"2
prepared an overview article comparing food production in
different cities of emerging countries. A more detailed
description of activities in Asian cities is provided by Yue-man
Yeung, and a social perspective on urban agriculture in Africa is
given by Friedhelm Streiffeler. Two FEN projects on urban
agriculture are also covered: Pablo Gutman analyses the results
of such research in Argentina, and Jerzy Kleer outlines work
currently under way in Poland.

All of this research supports our contention that the concept
of greater urban self-reliance should not be dismissed as a
utopian idea that has no place in reality. Despite the lack of
mainstream research, a directory of over 200 organizations active
in this area compiled for FEN3 shows that much more is
actually happening at the community level than is reflected in
official reports. These initiatives deserve to be observed,
analysed, and supported.

Unlike capital- and energy-intensive projects, community-based
initiatives do not depend on big budgets, although this is no
excuse for governments to decline their responsibilities. It must
be made quite clear that urban self-reliance does not mean less
work for the state but a different kind of work. What is needed
is policies that support such initiatives rather than
institutional barriers that block them This is a crucial issue
that must lead to new types of dialogue between communities and
local authorities.

For this to happen, we strongly endorse the assertion made by
Niņez [2] that household food production must be treated as a
serious development objective. At the same time the custom of directing
practically all agricultural development assistance to rural
areas must be challenged. To adapt the author's nautical analogy,
we prefer to see urban agriculture more as oars in a small
sailboat: while not the major source of propulsion, they are
indispensable for getting out of tight spots and, with a little
effort, can be relied on to ensure some progress when the wind
fails.

2. Copies of this 54page manual are available from Urban
Resource Systems, Inc., 783 Buena Vista West San Francisco, CA
94117, USA, for US$7.50 per copy in industrialized countries and
US$5.00 per copy in developing countries.

Tjeerd Deelstra
Ecology and Planning Research Office, Delft University of
Technology, Delft, Netherlands

There are currently about 350 million persons in the
developing nations who do not get enough to eat. They also suffer
from poor access to water, building materials, and fuels. The
percentage of the population that is sick and undernourished,
mainly children, is increasing in urban areas much faster than in
rural areas. In 15 years, more than 50 per cent of residents in
these countries will live in cities. The projections include
Mexico City at 28 million, Calcutta at 22 million, and Manila at
17 million. How will all these individuals be able to obtain the
necessary food, water, housing, and fuel in the year 2000, when
such needs cannot even be met today?

In cities in the northern hemisphere, consumption patterns
reflect the kinds of industrial production, commercial activity,
and services that have been developed. Consider, for example, how
large cities receive their provisions. They must rely on an
agricultural sector, established at some distance from urban
areas, that is dedicated to producing food. In fact, such
agricultural land produces more than the cities themselves
require, and thus contributes to increasing the national revenue
through exports. This is done to some extent with raw materials
and energy sources imported from developing countries.

In the case of the Netherlands, data show that 40 per cent of
all agricultural and food products are exported. In addition to
the 2.4 million hectares of land cultivated in their own country,
the Dutch have commercial arrangements to control about 13
million hectares in underdeveloped nations. The cassava and palm
oil that are produced in these areas go to feed livestock and
provide raw materials for the food industries of the
well-provisioned North rather than for local use. The chemical
fertilizer industry also requires raw materials and considerable
energy, both of which could be used to better effect providing
goods and services to the citizens of these emerging societies.
As with the production of food products, industrialized cities
depend on extensive but single-purpose sources to supply energy,
water, and construction materials. Such systems not only are
wasteful and polluting but tend to deplete resource supplies and
thus make cities even more vulnerable to supply failures.

For two basic reasons, the Northern model must change. First,
the current production, distribution, and consumption systems of
most cities can no longer function efficiently. For example, some
organic wastes that used to make a contribution to agriculture in
the form of compost are no longer available. Today there are too
many heavy metals and other non-biodegradable materials present
in industrially processed consumer goods. In San Francisco alone,
the amounts of aluminium, copper, and paper thrown out each year
equal the output of an average bauxite mine, a small copper mine,
and a decent-sized forest. The "metabolism" of cities
could be made much more independent through the use of
alternative energy sources from within by recycling wastes and by
closing the loops between the users of raw materials and
producers of residues. These same systems seriously damage the
environment in the northern hemisphere. For example, modern
agriculture results in depositions of heavy metals and nitrates
that can irreversibly pollute soils as well as the aquifers upon
which many cities rely for their domestic water sources. Other
modern production and transportation processes also contribute to
air water and soil pollution.

Second, this exploitation has had an impact not only on the
environment in developing notions but on their social fabric. It
is largely the rich who have benefited from the industrial and
agricultural activities directed toward Western countries, and
this has further widened the gap between the rich and the poor.

Urban development in the developing nations, therefore, must
increasingy be aimed toward self-sufficiency. Efforts must be
made not to repeat the mistakes made by the highly developed
cities, such as the generation of the many types of environmental
pollution that result from many industrial processes. There is
considerable potential for such development, since urban
infrastructure, such as water and sewage systems, roadways, and
electricity distribution, is in many cases either poorly
developed or totally absent. It is thus still possible to invest
in the kinds of development that help to make cities less
vulnerable to resource shortages or transportation disruptions.

Such approaches, which make more efficient use of energy and
produce less waste, also reduce the levels of pollution that must
be borne by both the environment and the people. Take, for
example, garbage removal. To manage it at the mega-city level,
one cannot simply rely on officials, whose responsibility is
always limited, or on powerful special-interest groups, who
always look after their own needs first.

Public participation in planning and development activities is
a requisite for well-managed cities. The problems affecting the
environment and urban society are so important that all available
expertise and an extensive social reservoir of ideas and action
must be used to resolve them.

Another advantage of public participation is that it helps to
satisfy the need expressed by people to be involved with their
community. It is when citizens actively participate in the
management of their city that they understand what is required to
make it run, the result being that both their behaviour and that
of responsible officials is adjusted to their city's needs.
People normally take a great deal of satisfaction from
contributing personally to the general well-being of their
community. Human resources are thus at least as important as
natural resources, raw materials, and technology in the
management and organization of a city.

Urban agriculture is one of many techniques that can be
employed to reduce the vulnerability, waste, and other problems
facing cities. It includes diverse activities that use nature for
the benefit of people, such as sylviculture (to produce wood for
fuel, lumber, or other uses), gardening, livestock raising, fruit
growing, and aquaculture, and can even improve the supply of
drinking water.

Urban agriculture offers many advantages to cities from both
ecological and technical perspectives, especially if the green
spaces that result are an integral part of the urban fabric.
Apart from improving the functioning of the city, it has social
advantages in that it enables vulnerable groups in the urban
community to improve their conditions. For example, a
well-developed city, whose fertile soils have been conserved, is
a healthier city. First of all, buffer zones and green belts help
to ensure that the city's hydrological system is not unduly
disrupted. Well-maintained water tables are important for green
spaces and also to support building foundations. Maintaining the
equilibrium of aquifers ensures potable water and helps to avoid
problems of sewers fracturing. Many new cities have areas prone
to widespread flooding. Green spaces-particularly well-worked
garden plots, which are much more porous than heavily trampled
parks-enable hydrological systems to maintain their surface
waters through higher rain infiltration rates, rather than having
too much surface run-off causing flash floods followed by
dried-up river beds.

Green spaces also have a favourable effect on air circulation,
temperature, and humidity levels in the city. In tropical
regions, alternating areas of cultivated land help to refresh the
atmosphere. Increased vegetation cover also protects soils and
reduces erosion. Finally, green spaces can play a role in
dispersing noise and reducing levels of dust in the air. Air
quality is also improved by the production of oxygen through
photosynthesis. This is what is meant by the hygienic function of
green spaces.

Urban agriculture can also contribute to the efficient
functioning of waste-water treatment systems. A sewage
purification system based on stimulating the growth of algae and
associated with an aquaculture facility can enable waste water to
be re-used for industrial purposes or even for drinking.

If efforts are made to separate household wastes at the source
to avoid contamination by toxic substances, some of these can be
composted for use as fertilizer for fields and gardens. In this
way, the demand for landfill sites to bury such wastes or
incinerators to burn them is reduced. It also may be possible to
produce biogas from agricultural wastes.

Urban agriculture can reduce the costly and problematic
transportation of food from rural areas because it produces food
locally. This means savings on roadways, trucks, fuels, trains,
boats, and warehouses, as well as storage and refrigeration
installations. The trans-shipment and transportation of food
products such as cereals and vegetables is often subject to
considerable losses due to spoilage and pests. This problem can
be reduced by more decentralized food production.

Another positive element is that urban agriculture can
optimize human resources, and this is not just a question of
physical labour. Persons who move into town from farms often have
special knowledge about land use and growing things that can be
taken advantage of for the wise management of cities' green
spaces. In addition, rapid urbanization frequently makes it
difficult for immigrants to adjust to life in large cities. Urban
agriculture enables them to use their traditional attachment to
the land to help them in the transition.

A major advantage of urban agriculture is its potential to
improve the socio-economic situation of the poor. Large numbers
of rural residents in developing countries migrate toward cities
with the hope of finding a more promising future. Many of them
are illiterate, and, as they can rely only on limited family and
other contacts for support, they often wind up in shanty towns or
move from place to place. The opportunity to raise some of their
own food can be a strong stimulus to stabilizing residence and
morale as well as to improving nutrition.

The confidence or self-esteem that such persons lack in
themselves can be reinforced when they realize that it is
possible to improve their situation. A feeling of having some
base upon which to work gives them increased security, enabling
them to integrate themselves more fully with the life of the
city. As urban agriculture is generally organized in a
co-operative manner, it contributes to increasing individuals'
social networks, which is a prerequisite for success in cities.

For these and other reasons, urban agriculture activities are
commonly found in many cities throughout the world. Elsewhere in
this issue, the impressive urban agriculture of Shanghai and
Guangzhou, China, and other cities in Asia is described.
Programmes are now under way in Addis Ababa; Ahmadabad, India;
Panama City; Lae, Papua New Guinea; Kisangani, Zaire; Bamako,
Mali; San Jose, Costa Rica; Manila; Hong Kong; Managua,
Nicaragua; Lusaka, Zambia; Belize; Maputo, Mozambique; Bangkok;
Mexico City; Dhaka; Nairobi; Dar es Salaam; Singapore; Beijing;
Lima; Santiago; and Seoul, not to mention many cities in Europe
and North America.

There are many differences between the programmes, notably
with respect to their social organization. In some cases, such
community development is a community-based initiative that
receives the support of local authorities or charitable
organizations. In others, it is undertaken with the help of
experts or, according to the local political system, the central
authorities. Co-operation among all of the participants is always
important.

The impact of such projects varies considerably. Sometimes
they remain limited to the technical aspects of agricultural,
sylvicultural, or aquacultural programmes. They can also entail
such things as legal aspects of land use and complementary
programmes on employment, financial support, professional
orientation, and education.